Quality Improvement

I tend to gravitate toward things that challenge my current skill set. I'm always curious when it comes to new techniques or new tools. I'm also into efficiency and a couple of posts, one at 'Tip of the Iceberg' and the other at 'Coding Horror', have piqued my interest.

Sometimes the posts on these blogs can be a bit over my head, but I enjoy the challenge. In one of Tim's recent posts, he talks about simplifying your code. The post reminds me of a recent post by Jeff Attwood.

This past year I've made a conscious effort to try to be less verbose in my code. I figure it goes hand in glove with good documentation techniques. I'm hoping that one day when another developer looks at my work, she/he won't have a "what the heck was he thinking?" reaction.

In 2008 I hope to incorporate more best practices into my Lotus Notes development. Bleeding edge is cool, but efficiently written, well documented, and thoroughly tested always wins the day.

Transparency

The most refreshing development from corporate America this past year has got to be the way IBM has embraced Web 2.0 and social networking to make their already world class product, Lotus Notes, even better.

Although the whole Notes community deserves a great deal of credit for their contributions, I believe Ed Brill stands out with his blog at edbrill.com. Postings such as this serve as an example of how the Lotus Notes community is engaged in making the product truly fantastic. Ed's honesty and candor about the product's shortcomings as well as his evangelism for all the recent great improvements for ND8, I feel, have played a significant role in taking the product to a fresh new level.

Nice work IBM on ND8. Nice work Notes community on ND8.

Talent

My family received the gift of sporting event tickets with the option of either a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game or a Minnesota Wild hockey game. Seeing as the Wolves are having their worst season ever (could rival the worst of any professional sport) we chose the Wild game.

We attended the Thu. Dec. 20 game against the New York Rangers. Wow what a fun experience and on top of it all I was able to witness Marion Gaborik score 5 goals in regulation play! That hasn't been done since Mario Lemieux had 5 in 1996.

It truly is inspiring to see someone using their God given talents at the highest level of performance. When I ponder performances like this, I am reminded of all hours of effort, both mental and physical, put forth by these achievers toward their craft. Probably the most important aspect is the love these individuals have for their craft and their fellow players/performers, lest we not forget we cannot achieve these things all on our own.

Way to go Marion and thanks for that inspiring performance!

Plotting a course

For over a year now, I've contemplated blogging this process I'm currently enduring. What process, you ask? The best I can describe it is personal refinement, stepping it up a few notches, going for it, and achieving a level of recognition from my peers for my expertise. More on that to come.

Gotta go back first before going forward. (I've been told not to dwell much on the past nor spend too much time making plans, but to spend the time on the here and now.) So I want to use this blog to document my progress and to hopefully make connections. No doubt the process will be a tool to aid the process of personal refinement.

The title of the blog is 'ded. reckoning', usually called dead reckoning. Right now I'm estimating my current position and trying to plot a course. I plan on writing about the landmarks I see along the way, the previously determined positions I know of and the destination I can, for now, only see in my mind's eye.

Hopefully, all future posts will be far less metaphorical than this.